Nn Man Guilty In Capital Killing, Attempted Rape

Jury To Recommend Life Term Or Death

April 11, 1997|By BEVERLY N. WILLIAMS Daily Press

NEWPORT NEWS — A jury that decided Thursday that Erland Brown is a murderer will hear evidence today about whether he should be put to death.

Brown was convicted Thursday of capital murder in the August 1994 slaying of an East End woman. Her body had so badly decomposed by the time it was found that prosecutors were forced to rely on DNA evidence to prove their case.

Brown, 32, who also was found guilty of attempted rape, showed no emotion as the verdicts were read.

The jury, which deliberated for six hours over two days, will begin hearing evidence today about whether Brown should die for killing 29-year-old Costina McQueen, or be sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The jury recommends a sentence but only a judge can impose one. Judges may not impose a more severe sentence than one the jury recommends, and rarely change the sentence recommended by a jury, particularly in capital murder cases.

Brown was charged with capital murder in the Aug. 6, 1994, slaying because he killed McQueen while trying to rape her.

McQueen was killed in her home in the 600 block of 43rd Street. She had been stabbed nine times in the back and neck. Her nude body was found four days later lying face down in a pool of blood in her kitchen.

There were no eyewitnesses. DNA experts linked Brown to the murder through DNA found in a semen stain left on a shirt in McQueen's bedroom. The scientists said there was a one-in-a-billion chance that someone other than Brown killed McQueen.

Brown's attorneys declined to comment on the verdict Thursday. During the two-week trial, they attempted to cast doubt on the state's DNA evidence.

Defense lawyer Bryan Saunders argued the tests were flawed because too few potential suspects were tested. Another defense lawyer, Jerry Lyell, an Alexandria lawyer specializing in DNA cases, questioned the experts' statistics, saying too small a sample was used to draw the one-in-a-billion conclusion.

Newport News Commonwealth's Attorney Howard Gwynn, who also declined comment Thursday, countered their arguments by saying Brown was the killer because traces of McQueen's DNA was found in the seminal fluid on the shirt. McQueen was wearing the shirt the last time she was seen alive.

The mingling of the DNA, Gwynn said, indicated McQueen and Brown had been in close contact that day, in spite of Brown's claims that he was not at McQueen's house that night and that he had never had sex with her.

At the time of the slaying and his arrest on Aug. 11, 1994, Brown was out of jail on $2,000 bond in a 1993 York County rape case.

He recently was convicted of attempted rape and abduction in that case and isserving 16 years in prison.